Here at FilmCritic.com we often come up with ideas for that ubiquitious Internet necessity: the Top 10 List. Of all the concepts we’ve kicked around however, none of us has ever suggested “The Top 10 Castration Scenes in Horror Films.” And now we don’t have to. I have no idea who Tracie Egan is, but her work in assembling the definitive list and illustrating it with both still photos and videos is nothing short of, um, remarkable. (And definitely NSFW.) For example, I heard of Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS years ago, but I never had the opportunity to see Ilsa’s handiwork…until now. I Spit on Your Grave? Yes, yes, of course. But Cannibal Holocaust? That was a new one for me. So guys, cross your legs, have a look, and be sure to read the comments, where film fans chime in with an incredible number of “Hey, how could you have forgotten…?” suggestions. As for me, I need to go lie down now.

Paul Newman’s death inspired me to head to my Netflix queue to line up several films I had never seen. While I didn’t need to catch up with The Towering Inferno, I did need to see, among other things, The Sting and The Hustler. Still to come: Hud. Gotta say I really enjoyed The Sting, and I can’t imagine why I didn’t get to it sooner. And I loved The Hustler for its smoky atmosphere of long-gone bus stations and pool halls. But in both cases, I have to say I thought Newman was good but not great. I think his long history of jovial self-deprecation and humble dismissal of his talent and his movies may have rubbed off on me. If he didn’t take himself seriously, why should I?

You know you’re a movie geek when you love reading Variety’s articles and movie reviews just to get a load of their unique shorthand lingo. It’s a world where a record company is a “diskery,” a TV series is a “skein,” a TV special is a “spesh,” and a film festival is a “sprocket opera.” I love this stuff. You could say it’s “boffo.” Luckily, Variety includes at its Web site a glossary that decodes its unique verbiage. Sensaysh!

Sukiyaki

I just want to take a moment to follow up on Pete Croatto’s review of Sukiyaki Western Django with my own brief review: like, wow. I happen to love Japanese director Takashi Miike rather profoundly, mainly because no one else in cinema can match his awe-inspiring combination of ambition, style, bravery, depravity, and humor. Prolific to the point of obsession, he’s like a power hitter who steps up to the plate and swings at every pitch, yielding lots of home runs, quite a few strikeouts, but almost nothing in between. Sukiyaki Western Django is but one of many examples of Miike toying with the history of film and bending it to his own crazy will. You’ll never look at a Spaghetti Western the same way again, especially when you hear his characters trying to wrap their Japanese mouths around wild-west lingo like “lily-livered loser.” You can imagine how that sounds with a Japanese accent. Why the hell did he do this English? I have no idea, but that’s Miike for you. Now go rent Ichi the Killer, a FilmCritic.com five-star pick, and Visitor Q.

Following up on that last post, here’s my little YouTube time waster: actors talking about acting. I came across a video of Jane Fonda describing how hard it was to film her final emotional scene with her father in On Golden Pond.  Jane tells a great tale. It’s sad, funny, dramatic, and even features a cameo by Katharine Hepburn. There’s no date on the interview, but from the condition of her face, let’s peg it at 1993. Then, in the “related videos” column, I found a video of Jane Fonda appearing on “Inside the Actor’s Studio” in which she tells the same story about 13 years later. And when I say the same story, I mean the same story. As she unspools her yarn, it’s almost word-for-word identical to the earlier interview, but this time, with a live audience on hand, she’s even more, you know, dramatic. Great stuff. There’s a life lesson here: We each create our own personal mythologies. It’s up to us remember them and to maintain them. I’d love to know how many times old Jane has dined out on that story.

There are 17 million stories in the Naked City, assuming, of course, the Naked City in question is Beijing. In honor of the Olympics, we’ve selected 11 great movies that take place in Beijing. Follow the stories of a bike messenger who loses his bike, student scaught up in the 1989 uprising, a young gay man in search of himself, an old codger watching his neighborhood get torn down around him, or yes, even the Last Emperor himself. Beyond the Bird’s Nest is where Beijing really gets interesting.

It’s Back to School time here at FilmCritic.com, and that means it’s time for us to present our list of the Worst High Schools in Movie History. It’s sure to bring back plenty of unpleasant memories of your own days wandering the halls between classes. Enjoy!

In an interview with MovieHole.net, Robert Downey, Jr. said exactly what I said in this blog not so long ago: The Dark Knight is too hard to understand. Take it away, Robert:

My whole thing is that that I saw ‘The Dark Knight’. I feel like I’m dumb because I feel like I don’t get how many things that are so smart. It’s like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I’m like, ‘That’s not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.’ I loved ‘The Prestige’ but didn’t understand ‘The Dark Knight’. Didn’t get it, still can’t tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I’m like, ‘I get it. This is so high brow and so f–king smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.’ You know what? F-ck DC comics. That’s all I have to say and that’s where I’m really coming from.

Two things have happened lately that have really got me thinking. First, I set up a sweet new HD home theater. Second, I had yet another lousy moviegoing experience at my local New York City megaplex, complete with gum snappers, seat shakers, cell phone talkers, and mid-movie conversationalists. As I sat there I wondered how much more of this I could tolerate. Do I really need to see this movie NOW and see it HERE? Do I need to pay $12 and sit with all these terrible people when I can wait six months and have Netflix (or cable On Demand, or the Internet, or whatever) deliver it to me at home, where I can watch it in delicious privacy for a total cost of $2 to $4? Now I realize that this is an old debate, but the arrival of great and cheaper-than-ever home entertainment technology and the ever-narrowing gap between the big-screen release date and the DVD release date gives it new urgency. I also realize that for some people, “going to the movies” matters more than than the movie itself. It’s a social occasion. As for me, I’m feeling more and more ANTI-social (and middle-aged I guess), and soon there are going to be millions more like me. What’s going to happen? How is this going to shake out? Your thoughts?

Zhang Yimou

The New York Times preps for the Olympics with this must-read profile of genius Chinese film director Zhang Yimou. He’s the guy who competed for and won the honor of directing tonight’s lavish opening ceremony. The article asks a heavy question: Has Zhang, who with his family was condemned and virtually enslaved during the dark years of the Cultural Revolution, sold his soul to his tormenters for fame, glory, and cash? The answer: like everything else in China, it’s complicated.

Don’t you just hate it when Oscar-caliber stars trade their dignity for a fat paycheck and end up embarrassing themselves in craptastic movies that don’t even deserve to end up in the discount DVD bin? I’m sure you can think of a few such perfomances. We’ve compiled our own list. And yes, Michael Caine appears on it twice.

It was a chance encounter with Strays, Vin Diesel’s first film, that got me thinking about the great early performances of my favorite stars. Many of them did incredible work back when they were starting out and long before they became objects of tabloid fascination. I quickly came up with a list of my 11 favorite early performances. Check it out. Which performances would you add to the list?

Is anyone besides me brave enough to admit that they couldn’t quite follow who was doing what to whom in The Dark Knight? As Sean O’Connell said in his review, “Double-crosses can disrupt the narrative flow, creating confusion in Nolan’s elaborate screenplay.” That’s for sure. My friend and I tried to talk it out on the walk home in a sort of A->B->C->D format but kinda gave up.

I just set up my new home theater (it rocks, thanks for asking), and I christened it with a screening of Stand by Me. This is a movie that made me cry 22 years ago, and guess what? It still does, and I must say that my monster new subwoofer makes that train-on-the-bridge scene totally awesome. It’s compelling to look at the cast and ponder where life has led them all. River Phoenix is dead, of course, and that makes his final fadeout in the movie’s closing moments all the more wrenching. Jerry O’Connell grew up to be fun, successful, buff, and engaged to a gorgeous woman after years of wild Hollywood bachelorhood. Wil Wheaton grew up to be one of the consistently coolest guys in blogland. As for Corey Feldman? I guess he didn’t actually grow up yet. Oh, Corey, Corey, Corey.

In this, the last of my “good old days of summer” posts, I recall the wonderful summer of 1982. I was a newly minted high school graduate enjoying one last respite, and my friend Gordon had a job as an usher at the fourplex downtown. That meant the movies were free! Here’s what I saw and what I thought at the time. I was so right…and I was so wrong.

• May 20, Conan the Barbarian, “P.U.”
• May 29, Rocky III, “Great!”
• June 20, Poltergeist, “Really scary and fun.”
• June 28, Blade Runner, “Slow. Uninteresting characters.”
• July 3, Annie, “Sappy but lavish.”
• July 6, E.T., “Perfect. Funny, sad, the best!”
• July 7, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, “Good but still lacking. Try again.”
• July 18, The Road Warrior, “Great car wrecks.”
• July 22, Summer Lovers, “Good sights and A+ music.”
• July 27, Popeye, “The worst. Robin Williams is ugly and songs are barf. Yuk. Ptooey.”
• August 4, Tron, “The visuals are awesome but the plot is shaky.”
• August 5, Young Doctors in Love, “Great to see all those stars.”

Oh, Netflix, you seductive siren. Try as I might, I can’t stay away. Why do I feel the burning need to manipulate my queue two, three, even four times a day?? There’s always something new to catch up on, a new country or director to study, a new genre to be explored. And all those guilty pleasures.

I’ll fess up. Mine is Charlie Chan. This seemingly endless series of B pictures from the ’30s and ’40s has captivated me, even though I’m well aware of the varying quality levels and the sometimes politically incorrect depiction of Asians, especially as played by the non-Asians who were cast to play Chan over the years.  Anyway, I hope you’ll take my advice and dip in by renting Charlie Chan at the Circus, one of my favorites and one of the few in which we get to see all 12 Chan children at once as they parade into the big top–ordered by height–to watch the show. Number One Son (Keye Luke) is on hand to assist his pop when he’s not distracted by the contortionist, and there are lions, tigers, and a couple of elegant midgets.

Boo-yah! It’s time for a troop of millennial teens to kick some Axis of Evil ass! According to The Hollywood Reporter, one of the most unforgettable movies of the ’80s, Red Dawn, is slated for a remake, and my imagination is running wild. In case you haven’t seen it, and you really should, it’s a Reagan-era crapsterpiece in which a bunch of Soviet and Cuban soldiers parachute into a Wyoming town as part of an all-out invasion of the USA. A band of gun-toting teens heads for the hills and forms an insurgency (or is it a counterinsurgency?), and they all become heroes in the end. Did you know it was the first movie ever to carry the PG-13 rating? So let’s see…here are my suggestions:

• Instead of Commies, Al-Qaeda and some North Korean ninjas
• Instead of Patrick Swayze, Milo Ventimiglia
• Instead of Charlie Sheen, Shia LeBeouf
• Instead of Lea Thompson, Miley Cyrus
• Instead of Harry Dean Stanton, oh what the hell, bring him back!

Last week, I listed the movies I saw as a 15-year-old during the Summer of ‘79. That was a pretty good summer, but the Summer of ‘80 was way better. I was 16, I had access to a car, and I had busboy money to spend down at the Fine Arts I, II, III, and IV. Here’s what I saw and what I thought at the time:

• June 19, The Shining, “Beautiful and scary.”
• June 28, Fame, “Maybe the best movie in two years.”
• July 1, The Empire Strikes Back, “OK but lacking.”
• July 14, Airplane!, “God, so funny!”
• July 19, Fame again
• July 26, Airplane! again
• August 1, My Bodyguard, “Good but short. Ruth Gordon wow.”
• September 2, Xanadu, “Good music but dumb in places.”

They don’t make summers like that anymore. Sigh. Here we are 28 years later. The Shining was remade (quite unnecessarily). Fame became a TV series, a stage show, a reality series, and will soon be remade. The Empire Strikes Back had four sequels, Airplane! had a sequel and spawned countless imitations, and Xanadu is on Broadway in spite of itself. Around and around we go.

I just got back from a couple of screenings The New York Asian Film Festival, and I wanted to give a brief shoutout to Takeshi Kaneshiro, the star of Accuracy of Death, one of the movies I watched. Best known in America as one of the stars of The House of Flying Daggers, the Japanese-Taiwanese Kaneshiro is a pan-Asian megastar who acts in three languages and has probably singlehandedly sold more cell phones, sunglasses, and cologne than any other person on the planet. And like most Asian heartthrobs, he’s also produced a few CDs of love ballads.

I’d say Kaneshiro is the Asian Brad Pitt, but he’s actually a much better actor who, when coupled with a good director, is an indelible screen presence. That was certainly the case with Accuracy of Death, in which he plays a mellow grim reaper, and you can also see him do his thing in the massive 2005 Chinese musical Perhaps Love and in Wong Kar Wai’s wonderful Chungking Express.

I wonder what Hollywood would do with Kaneshiro if it had the chance. I have no idea how good his English is, and maybe it’s best that he avoids the Jet Li trap and stays in Asia, where at least he’s allowed to kiss women on screen.

Far be it from me to judge people, but I just caught yet another one of those weird interviews Mike Myers has been doing in support of The Love Guru, and it inspired me to ask this question: what’s wrong with Mike Myers? Discuss amongst yourselves.